Tate Modern is Britain's national museum of modern art in London. The galleries are housed in the former Bankside Power Station, which was originally designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, the architect responsible for Battersea Power Station, and built in two stages between 1947 and 1963. The power station closed in 1981. Since its opening on May 12, 2000, it has become a very popular destination for Londoners and tourists. Entry is free. Marsyas, Anish Kapoor sculpture for the Turbine Hall, comprises three steel rings joined together by a single span of PVC membrane. Two are positioned vertically, at each end of the space, while a third is suspended parallel with the bridge. Seemingly wedged into place, the geometry generated by these three rigid steel structures determines the sculptures overall form, a shift from vertical to horizontal and back to vertical again. Kapoor began the project in January 2002, soon realising that the only way he could challenge the daunting height of the Turbine Hall was, paradoxically, to use its length. He approached the space as a rectangular box with a shelf (the bridge) in the middle of it, and over many months, explored its potential through a series of drawings and sculptural maquettes. Human scale and the relationship of the viewer to the work was central to his thinking. The title refers to Marsyas, a satyr in Greek mythology, who was flayed alive by the god Apollo. The sculptures dark red colour suggests something of the physical, of the earthly, of the bodily It is impossible to view the entire sculpture from any one position. Instead we experience it as a series of discrete encounters, in which we are left to construct the whole. Anish Kapoor was born in Bombay in 1954. He lives and works in London.

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